


in the wake

by Trojie



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, M/M, Minor Patrick Stump/Joe Trohman, One-Sided Patrick Stump/Pete Wentz, Tour Bus, Unresolved Tension, confused feelings, deleted scene joe/patrick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-02-14 13:36:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13008942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: It's 2013, and Mikey Way unexpectedly hitches a ride from LA to Jersey with Fall Out Boy.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [uglowian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/uglowian/gifts).



_2005_

'Me and Pete Wentz aren't dating. We're heterosexual males. Um. Sort of.'

***

_2007_

It's a million degrees on this stage but the slick dampness making Patrick's shirt collar stick to the back of his neck is spit, not sweat. He hates the fact that he can tell the difference. He flips the bird at Pete, who isn't looking any more, and keeps singing, angrily. All these fucking lies, Pete's lies, perfectly framed, perfectly pitched for the crowd in front of them, just like Pete's arms around Patrick's neck a second ago.

Patrick tells so many lies for Pete, in the studio and on stage, and it used to feel like a giggling conspiracy, some kind of rockstar origin story, but now Pete's defiant, wrongheaded slam-poet yelling in Patrick's straining throat just feels gross, like a foreign object to be choked on. Especially this fucking song. Patrick really, truly hates this song some nights. Booze on someone else's breath, on their mouth, on their tongue, isn't sweet. He knows. He tastes it onstage, and then has it to haunt him when he's alone in his bunk - the stale-bitter memory of Pete, the knowledge that Pete fake-out kisses almost all of his friends when there are cameras around. 

Patrick used to worry that he dwelt on it because he was into it, but it's more like ... it doesn't mean anything, and Patrick worries about Pete and how nothing he does means anything to him. Patrick normally tries to push him away when he moves in too close, because frankly the slobber is gross. Sometimes he can use the headstock of his SG to help, sometimes he can't, sometimes they collide and it hurts, but Pete still doesn't leave him alone even when it does. He always did like pressing on his bruises, that's never changed. 

Patrick used to think they were different that way. Now he's not so sure. 

See, there's a lot of words Pete wrote down in the heat of whatever, in order to pin the memories, like butterflies to be catalogued and put away, but … Patrick needed lyrics, so he just took them when they were offered, and never asked questions. And it was easy to sort out setlists that didn't mean they had to relive Pete's greatest hits, when they were playing basements and malls. But now they play _venues_ , and for whatever stupid reason an inexplicable number of people bought this single, this crystalline moment of pain that Pete tried to stake through the heart with his pen ... so now Patrick has to sing it forever. 

It feels fucking Sisyphean, but he never tries to take it off the setlist.

Because Pete's almost never clean and sober on stage, not properly, not anymore, and he leans on Patrick and drools on his neck but maybe if Patrick keeps on singing, every night, a song he lost an argument about pronouns over, keeps letting Pete do this ... maybe at least he'll never have to sing another song about a parking lot.

Halle-fucking-lujah.

***

_2008_

'I can't sing this,' Patrick says, twisting on the piano bench to look up at Pete, who put the sheet of paper on the music stand from over his shoulder. 

Pete just looks at him. His eyes look even bigger than usual, blue-bruised all around, and his mouth is downturned at the corners and normally it takes zero impetus to get him to exhibit himself, he's the quintessential attention whore, but. He's got his hands stuffed in the pocket of a hideous fucking hoodie. He looks abashed. 

He looks unslept.

The paper the words are printed on in Pete's angular capitals looks distinctly like it's been crumpled up and smoothed out, Patrick realises, when he turns back to it to avoid staring at Pete any longer. Like it's been balled up and thrown in the trash at least once.

'I need you to,' says Pete behind him. 'I can't do it myself, doofus.'

Patrick's eye hooks on _said I'll be fine til the hospital_ and he remembers that. He fucking remembers that. 

His hands are on the piano keys before he's really thinking about it. 

These sessions have been a fucking nightmare, everything's been hard work, Pete most of all, but all of it - finding middle ground with Joe, trying not to just take the sticks off Andy and demonstrate when he doesn't find the exact groove Patrick's been hearing in his head, even though they're both better at what they do than Patrick is. He's starting to feel like the fucking jack of all trades, master of none. 

He knows he's a control freak. He knows. He just doesn't know how to stop. 

Case in point - he's ignoring Pete now, because the hook in his ears, the keyboard under his hands, are more important, somehow. 

Pete presses a soft, damp kiss high up to Patrick's cheekbone, and then his warmth moves away. 

_I still want you back_ Patrick's mouthing under his breath as the door closes, trying to fight the prickling heat in his eyes from welling up into fucking tears. The light outside in the corridor flicks off, leaving Patrick alone in the studio.

His band is gonna break up, Patrick knows it like his name.

***

_2013_

'It's cool for Mikey to swing by the show, right?' Pete says around what sounds like his toothbrush, down the phone. 'He's kinda down, y'know. Could use some company.'

Patrick would bet cold, hard cash that Mikey Way is 'kinda down' the way that Hell is 'kinda warm', but despite the fact that it's 3pm, Patrick's only been awake two hours. This is his last day at home before they climb back in buses again, he was still luxuriating in his mattress when Pete called and he hasn't got up yet. So he doesn't say 'jeez, don't you think it's a bit soon?' he just says, muzzily into his pillow, 'Whatever, yeah man, that's fine.'

'Awesome,' says Pete. Or, 'awwffmmm', technically, but Patrick understands. They weren't on hiatus _that_ long.

He rings off and, with a sigh, hauls himself out of bed. Coffee. Breakfast. Soundcheck. All things he can do on autopilot, at least.

He's halfway through his coffee when he starts to feel gut-sour, and doesn't know why.

Mikey shows up during the openers and lurks side-stage, in an ineffectual hat and sunglasses disguise that Patrick fully expects to see thirteen photos of online tomorrow because it's _Pete and Mikey_ and they can't be within three blocks of each other without the internet stirring trouble up. Pete manoeuvres Mikey in between himself and Joe, like he needs bodyguards. Maybe he does - he's curled in on himself like he used to be all the time, the way Patrick thought he might have left behind him after the Black Parade finally burned down. Apparently not.

Pete doesn't put his arm around Mikey, but honestly, Patrick wonders if maybe he should, cameras be damned.

They leave him with the techs when it's time to go onstage, and Patrick doesn't look back at him once, caught up in the pure fucking rush of being surrounded by noise, Andy solid at his back and Joe on fire at his side and Pete … Pete weirdly too far away. When Patrick actually looks for him, because he missed this, he fucking _missed this_ \- half the time Pete's attention's on the darkness in the flies.

When they come off, Mikey gives good side-stage hugs, like always, even though they're all wet with sweat. He's smiling wide, and through the sour prickle of okay-fine-jealousy, Patrick has to remind himself that Pete's pretty good with people, at knowing what will help them. Maybe Mikey did just need to get out for the night. Patrick can suck it up, for one fucking gig. He hugs Mikey back when it's his turn, and smiles.

Mikey laughs at them too, when the stamping starts up. 'I think they want an encore,' he says, shoving Pete to turn him back around the way he came. 

'Duty calls,' Pete says, and he catches Patrick's wrist to pull him along, like he hasn't been playing shows since before he was legally allowed in the venues and didn't personally scrawl the last three songs on tonight's setlist. Like he doesn't know his own job. Andy, the consummate professional, is already sitting on his drum stool out there in the dark, weathering the screaming, and Joe's shrugging back under the strap of his Tele. Patrick pulls free of Pete and takes his Gretsch from his tech.

'Break a leg,' Mikey mouths through the roar. Pete blows him a kiss and then Patrick's the last one to plunge back out as the lights come up, the ghost of Pete's fingers on his wrist.

The rest is static and adrenaline and hot fucking joy, but Pete never comes too close, never collides with Patrick, never touches him. Not like he used to.

God help him, some perverse, jealous-bitter, masochistic bit of Patrick doesn't think it has to wonder why not. And it's proved right, when he gets offstage finally and Pete and Mikey are already gone.

'I gotta hit the showers,' Patrick yells at Joe when they come back off again, deaf from the screaming even with the earpiece's protection. Joe mimes beer and grins at him, watching as Patrick scrambles for the bathroom because ew, the sweat is dripping down his spine and it's going cold. 

When Patrick gets to his bus, Andy's installed like a fixture on the couch, game controller in hand. He salutes silently, and Patrick forges past to the bunks, body already protesting. He's out of practice. Which is dumb, because it's not like he didn't go on his own goddamn tour while Fall Out Boy was off - he didn't _stop_. It just. Wasn't like this. Wasn't ever this big, or this frantic, or this much, all at once. 

Hair damp against the pillow, he spares a thought for the hope that Pete doesn't stay out too late, because he's such a fucking princess if he doesn't get enough sleep, and then pretty much passes out. 

His ears are still ringing when he wakes up in the morning, lungs still phantom-feeling Andy's kickdrum, and the bus is running under him, eating up the miles. They stop for breakfast at a diner, white paint turned grey with road grime, under a grey sky and next to a grey highway, with only a splash of gut-red signage to break the monotony. Andy and Patrick stumble off the bus and make it to a booth pretty coordinatedly given neither of them has had a coffee yet, to wait for Pete and Joe to surface. Andy blows on his hands as he peruses the menu card, and sighs. Patrick already checked it and did the same thing - there's fuck all Andy can actually eat on here.

The second bus pulls up. Patrick's inner control freak unclenches one notch.

Andy orders toast with a rueful smile for the waitress. Patrick makes a mental note to ask someone if they can actually check menus before they pick diners - it's 2013 for fuck's sake, this kind of shit is on the internet now.

Joe pushes his way into the diner, looking undercaffeinated and overtired, at about the same time as Andy's toast arrives. Patrick still hasn't decided what he wants.

'I think we've got a passenger for a while,' Joe says, watching Andy ignore the little individually wrapped butter servings and carefully read the jelly packets' microscopic ingredients list before finally just spreading the contents straight onto the dry, crisped bread. Patrick squints at Joe and is about to ask what the fuck, when Pete sits down next to him and the explanation of what, exactly, the fuck, becomes abundantly clear. Even Andy raises an eyebrow. 

'Yeah, I see that,' he says, the picture of chill, while Patrick just stares. 'Good night, was it, Pete?' He touches idly at his own neck in the universal gesture for _dude you've got a killer hickey going on there._

Pete rolls his eyes. His hair's standing up on end from a combination of yesterday's product and the pillowcase and too many hours since the last battle with the straighteners. 'He just needs a place to lay low, that's all,' he says. 'He's … fuck you, you all know what it's like.'

Patrick's stomach twists. He doesn't say anything.

'He's welcome to hitch,' says Andy, shrugging. 'I like Mikey fine, he's good company. And I'm not on your bus.'

Joe says, 'just don't let him near a camera, for God's sake, or it'll be 2005 all over again.' 

Pete glares. 

Patrick shrugs. 'He's buying his own coffee,' he says, and waves for the waitress again.

***

No-one actually asks how long Mikey's gonna stay on the road with them, but it itches Patrick. They're supposed to be reconnecting as a band, forging something new, and not to be a dick but Mikey - or rather, PeteandMikey - belongs to a time past, part of the Fall Out Boy that didn't work. 

Pete's hickey fades. His mouth stays bitten-puffy, his eyes stay softer, warmer than Patrick remembers from touring in the past. Patrick stays irked. 

But it's not like Mikey's a logistical problem or they're constantly getting papped. Point of fact, Patrick barely sees him - most of the time, he doesn't even leave the bus. Pete brings him back food from when they stop, and he occasionally gets out to stretch his legs and use the can at truckstops at night, but he's more camera-shy than Patrick's ever seen him be before.

He does come out for soundchecks, if they don't involve photographers. He's here today, lurking stage left with Pete and presumably offering his usual dry commentary, half through tiny quirks of the corners of his mouth, while Patrick's eyes cross, trying to sort out the levels in his in-ears. 

He strums open strings a few times, shooting a look at Joe, who shrugs and starts playing Knocking on Heaven's Door because he's a tragic hippie under all that metalhead cred and the emo tarnish. 'Up?' Patrick mouths at the tech desk, twitching his hand, up up up. Joe keeps playing and Patrick joins in til he gets what he wants. Then they both shut the fuck up so Andy can go through the frankly monstrous process of getting his kit miked and checked. 

Out of the corner of his eye Patrick sees Pete crack up, so he twitches sideways to listen. 

Mikey's shaking his head, but he's smiling. Pete's got his bass off his shoulder, holding it out, and Mikey's refusing to take it.

'C'mon, dude, I know you know it,' he saying. 'And it's not like it's hard.'

Mikey makes a face. 'I knew it a million years ago, maybe. Anyway, I didn't bring my bass.'

Pete makes a face right back at him and jiggles his bass at Mikey. 'You can use this one. Or it's not like I don't have three other basses in a flight case in the trailer. Take your fucking pick.'

Shaking his head, Mikey actually puts his hands behind his back to avoid taking the thing. 'I hate playing your fucking P bass. The setup's all wrong.'

Pete pokes Mikey in the shoulder with the headstock, gently, but Mikey still won't take it, and frankly Patrick can't blame the guy. Jesus. There's such a thing as 'too soon', Pete. He still doesn't say it.

'What terrible thing is he trying to talk you into?' Joe asks Mikey, cutting across Patrick and calling it out right across the stage. 

Mikey turns to him and shrugs theatrically, grinning where Pete can't see him. 'He wants me to play 'Saturday' for you tonight, something about how he needs to sing? I don't even know,' he says, and Joe snorts. 

'If that's what he wants to call it, sure.'

Andy, up on the riser, adds a _ba-dum-tish_ , and they all fall about giggling. No-one asks Patrick, and Patrick doesn't volunteer an opinion. They don't put Saturday on the setlist, though. They play Grand Theft Autumn instead.

It's not a - whatever. Patrick refuses to read into it.

Pete stays two feet away at all times, but he watches Patrick so hard the back of Patrick's neck burns.

***

Roads are strobelights at night, flickering faster closer to urban centres and slower out in the sticks. Patrick curls up in the bus lounge with a dog-eared copy of House of Leaves that he thinks Pete maybe left in his house some years ago, and his iPod, and tries to get down to something that isn't obsessively changing the levels on drum tracks, except the book is creepy and his shuffle keeps throwing up shit that jars him out of it anyway. 

Andy slides himself onto the floor next to Patrick's knees with a book of his own and something that looks like a cookie. Patrick glances down and is happy someone found him some snack food even if Andy-safe cookies are kind of gross. The book is a comic, he notes. Because Andy's apparently more sensible than he is. He pulls his headphones out, to be companionable.

They page through their respective books for a while. Then Andy says, without looking up, 'I'm gonna swap buses with Pete for a while.'

'What? Why?'

Andy shrugs. 'Because Joe's going stir-crazy. We fitted these buses out for two people each, and Mikey's tidy and all but it's still a bit much. And. Uh. Apparently there's a noise issue sometimes too.' He makes a face somewhere between a smirk and a grimace.

'So I get stuck with the "noise issue"?' Patrick scowls, book forgotten. 

'No, doofus, we'll take turns, for fuck's sake. In another couple days I'll swap with you, and you and Joe can share for a while.' Before Patrick can say another word, Andy adds, 'Joe promises not to smoke on the bus.'

'He's gonna be cranky.'

'Whatever, we're all making sacrifices.'

Patrick rolls his eyes. 'How many more miles til Jersey?' He assumes that's Mikey's destination. Again, no-one's actually asked yet.

'Oh, don't be a bitch, Patrick. Mikey's a nice guy, and Pete's your friend, you could cut them some fucking slack.'

'What are you, the patron saint of shitty bassplayers now?' Patrick asks, and he's not really doing any good at not being bitchy but ugh, really? He thought they were years past Pete's 'noise issues'. He thought - he was _assured_ \- that, making out aside, Mikey wasn't even a noise issues kind of a friend, although he was never actually stupid enough to believe that.

'No, I'm just a guy whose band disintegrated around him a couple years ago, and had to fly home to his mom alone.' Andy puts his comic to one side and leans up to look Patrick straight in the eye. 'You think Mikey couldn't have just got on a plane? He needs Pete right now. Don't fuck this up and hurt him more than he's already hurting.'

'Andy -'

'Just let him fucking ride on your bus, dude. It's not that big a deal.'

***

Moving Pete onto the bus is a flurry of half-open duffle bags and thrown hoodies across parking lots. Moving Andy off involves Patrick with an armful of Xbox peripherals tripping over one of Pete's lost hoodies and nearly breaking his neck. 

Mikey just has a backpack, which he moves himself. Andy wasn't wrong about him being tidy, which is apparently something he's grown into since the last time Patrick actually saw him on a tourbus, in … Christ, it really was 2005. My Chem's bus then was a disaster zone, and possibly a health hazard.

He remembers mascara wands rolling underfoot, and a smell that was a combination of generic five-dudes-in-tight-space but also hairspray and radioactive coffee, and the fact that the entire place was generally an explosion of comic books and rolling tobacco and the sharp cut-off ends of strings trodden into the shitty carpet, because Ray hadn't yet got to the point of trusting someone else to restring his Les Paul for him. 

But here's Mikey and he's got one singular backpack and while Pete manages to infect the entire bus with his bullshit inside of half an hour, that backpack disappears into what was Andy's and is now Pete's bunk, and Patrick doesn't see any of its contents until a third toothbrush appears on the side of the tiny sink in the toilet, next to his and Pete's.

It's like Mikey's trying to make himself as small and unobtrusive as possible. Patrick, grudgingly, isn't quite sure what Joe's problem was, until he's finally tired enough to sleep and gets up off the couch to go to bed, as quietly as possible - and brushes up against a foot, hanging out of Pete's bunk. 

It's not Pete's foot. There's a little 'mmmfm' noise, and the toes curl, and all of a sudden it's weird as fucking shit, because they're being very quiet but Patrick, trying to go to bed, is becoming increasingly, hotly aware that they're awake, and. 

Well. Noise issues, check. 

He crawls into his bunk and pulls the curtains and reaches for his headphones, but sleeping in over-ear headphones is almost impossible. Patrick curses his own inbuilt snobbery, that's meant he never invested in earbuds, when he tries to roll on his side and can't because of the starburst bite of pain in the squashed cartilage of his ear. He pulls the headphones off. 

It's very quiet in the bus. Not quiet enough, though. Patrick focuses on his own breathing, and on not listening, which is like not thinking about pink elephants, really, and tries to pretend the soft, involuntary-seeming throaty noises from the bunk over are just sleepy sounds. 

It's no good. Patrick jams his pillow over his head. He's not fucking listening to this, but it keeps bleeding through, the rhythm of them together, desperately trying not to be heard. It's mostly bunk-shifting noises. Creaks, that's all. Rustling. Nothing human, nothing you'd think was suspicious at all, except for the rhythm of it.

Patrick's a drummer at heart. He's never been able to tune out a beat.

Pete gasps when he comes. Patrick knows it's him, from long and longsuffering experience, from vans, from thin-walled hotel rooms, from that shitty, shitty flat a million years ago. Pete's pretty quiet, but Patrick has a good ear, which he hates about himself late at night. 

This isn't supposed to happen any more. Patrick rolls onto his stomach and refuses to think about why he remembers that noise, why it hung on in his brain.

He doesn't hear Mikey. Maybe Mikey's even quieter, actually successfully quiet. Patrick guesses probably you'd get really fucking stealth if you were sharing a tourbus with your actual brother. 

He can't help glaring at the pair of them over the coffee maker the next morning. Pete glares right back, daring him to say anything. Mikey does looks a little shamefaced. He also looks tired. Patrick bites back a comment about Pete keeping him up at night because fucking hell, much as he wants to be snarky, he doesn't actually want to talk about it. 

It's fine, it's whatever. It's a war flashback to the dark days of Warped Tour, but … fine. Patrick can grit his teeth and deal. At least this tour he finally doesn't have to fucking sing songs about Mikey Way's mouth, because they're supposed to be prioritising the new material, and Pete managed to keep his thirst to himself on this record. 

Patrick, naively, thought that meant they were over this phase. 

He buys some shitty earbuds at the next truckstop when no-one's looking, and secretes them into his pocket for tonight. They're on the road most of the day, so he spends a couple of hours carefully crafting a playlist he thinks he can sleep to. He's proud of it. There's hardly any Enya. 

It lasts half an hour, doing a solid job. He doesn't hear a single sex noise. But it can't cover fucking talking. 

It's Pete, sounding a little choked, clearly trying to whisper and too … something Patrick doesn't want to think about … to manage. 'I'm sorry, I just. I can't. You know I can't.'

Patrick feels his face flush burning fucking red and he reaches for his iPod to turn the music all the fucking way up - but he doesn't. He turns it off, instead, with a shaking hand and his bottom lip worried hard between his teeth, because he shouldn't, he knows he fucking shouldn't. But. 

'You don't _have_ to,' says Mikey softly, quieter than Pete. There's some rustling, and Pete makes a crumpled noise in the back of his throat, and Patrick's body is … caught taut between the desire to roll closer, hear better, and to run away. 'This is fine,' says Mikey, low voiced. Patrick doesn't know what 'this' is and he doesn't want to know. 'This is fine. It's fine if we just … don't, okay. It's always been fine, I keep trying to tell you.'

Pete's voice is wet and thick when he says, 'Then you shouldn't -'

'I want to,' Mikey cuts him off. 

'But that's not fair.'

'Yeah, well. Nothing's fair. C'mon, Pete, you can at least give me this, can't you?'

Pete noises high and desperate and choked off in the middle, like he suddenly realised his own volume control was off.

Patrick rolls into the side of his bunk and frantically turns his music back on, loud. It's tinny. It's objectively terrible. It's blessedly free of the sound of Mikey doing something to Pete that Pete can't or won't reciprocate, but it can't make Patrick unhear what he heard, and it can't change the weird, too-hot, restless way his body feels under the suddenly-sweaty sheet.

***

'- yeah, I know, I just - look I'm sorry, okay. Gee, please -'

The sound of Mikey on the phone is muffled behind the toilet door, punctuated by bumps when the bus rides rough over bad tarseal. Patrick doesn't know where Pete is, even though there's not exactly a lot of places to hide on a bus, but Mikey deserves some privacy. Patrick shuffles himself into the back lounge with his laptop and his (good) headphones.

He's got some of the tracks they recorded in the demo phase stored away, he squirrels shit like that, just in case, for rainy days and boredom and times like this, when he needs Andy's apocalyptic hi-hat to drown out the outside world. He doesn't even notice the door didn't shut properly behind him until Mikey slips through it and slides onto a seat and picks up Pete's bass.

His hands settle on the fretboard, natural as breathing. So much for the set-up being wrong. Maybe it's because he's skinnier than Pete, but his fingers look longer, and he starts to wander up and down, loosening up, and Patrick lets the track in his ears run out so that he can hear the dull thud of the unamplified bass as Mikey plays. 

His eyes are glassy and faraway, and Patrick can't work out if he really knows what he's doing or if he's just doing it. Autopilot, processing. Spinning beachball of death. Patrick doesn't interrupt, at any rate.

Mikey's naturally faster than Pete. Patrick can't help cataloguing this shit. The rhythm that Mikey settles into is up-tempo compared to Pete's usual warmup noodling, but what that translates to is, where Pete has a sense of when to hang on a note til it dies and then when pick it up again, Mikey's unrelenting, clinging to the beat like if he lets go he'll fall. He's no virtuoso, but …

See, here's the thing, the guilty, weaselling little thing Patrick's been avoiding thinking about: he always sort of dismissed Mikey as a musician. Because when he was listening to My Chem he was listening to like … everyone around Mikey, and Mikey was kind of shit when they started, make no bones about it. But listening to him just like this, no guitarists to distract (or drummer to detract - Patrick thinks he can probably guess why Mikey plays like he's trying to be a metronome) and no Gerard … he's just. He's solid. He's solid and he's making Patrick want to pick up his Gretsch and join in. 

He doesn't, though. He just lets the headphones, always precarious when he's got them upside down around the nape of his neck, slide down, and lets himself be mesmerised, until Mikey looks up at him in the low light, long fingers still moving. 

The sun went down somewhere outside when Patrick wasn't paying attention, and now the only visibility comes in snatches and flashes from outside, that tourbus strobe again. Mikey's eyes are warm and dark and lively, and something in Patrick flushes brakelight red. 

'Sounds good,' he says, and Mikey actually smiles, a flash as brief as when the light comes in from outside, but he stops playing. 

'Sorry, I just. Needed to think,' he says, half like a question. 

'Bad news?' Patrick asks, and then kicks himself. Mikey's in the throes of his band splitting, and My Chem are - were - huge, and the announcement sounded pretty final. There's gonna be hard phonecalls for months, at least. 

'Gee wants me to fly home, from wherever we're stopping next,' says Mikey, still hunched around Pete's bass, like it's his Gordian knot of a comfort zone. 'But if I do I have to like, deal with all my share of the shit and the logistics and I just. I shouldn't have answered my fucking phone.'

He shrugs. His fretting hand twiddles a little over his strings. Pete's strings. 'I'm selfish, I guess. I just don't ... I'm not ready for summer to be over.'

It's not even the end of May, Patrick wants to point out - summer's barely even started, but he takes the point. He also doesn't know why Mikey's telling him this, telling him now, telling him here. Telling him at all. It's not like Patrick's been welcoming.

'I never meant to colonise your bus,' Mikey says. 'I wasn't even gonna - I _was_ gonna fly home. I just came out to see you guys that night and, well, Pete -'

Patrick laughs, awkward and too loud, because 'and, well, Pete' is like, always the reason. For everything. 

'I'm sorry for always being in your space, I suppose,' says Mikey, and slides the bass off his lap to set it down in its place again. 

Patrick nudges Mikey's knee with his own, the only bits of either of them that are in range. 'You're not,' he says. 'I mean, you don't need to be sorry, you're not annoying me.' 

Mikey gives him a look that says eloquently he knows that's a lie, but he doesn't leave. Their knees stay pressed together, bleeding heat that makes it feel like dampness, the faintest weirdest reminder of a kiss on the nape of the neck Patrick's ever had, but Mikey's something of Pete's, in orbit somehow, and Pete hasn't fucking touched Patrick in a week of gigs. Something about this feels grounding, like Patrick was spinning and didn't even know til he stopped.

'Pete likes having you here,' Patrick tries, and fuck, he shouldn't have, because the heat burns its way back up his throat to stain his cheeks, and Mikey won't meet Patrick's eyes all of a sudden.

***

'I hear you're jamming with Mikey now,' says Joe, looming up behind Patrick in the gas station bathroom where he's washing his hands. 'You need to be careful, Stump.'

Patrick shakes his hands off. 'Dude, it's not like I'm auditioning him for a place in the band, okay, chill.'

Joe rolls his eyes and goes for the sink when Patrick turns away to get to the dryer. 'That's zero percent what I meant.'

'Then what?'

Patrick gets himself elbowed out of the way of the dryer before his hands stop being tacky-wet. 'He learned everything he knows off Ray motherfucking Toro,' says Joe quietly. 'Played with the guy for twelve fucking years, Patrick, and now -'

'Oh, c'mon, like this is anything like that. He just wants to play, there's no harm in it.'

'I'm just saying, don't be his rebound, man.' 

Patrick makes a face. 'He and Pete are -'

'Fuck off, I'm not talking about Pete, I told you. I'm talking about _Toro_. You think it isn't a big deal Mikey's picked up a bass again? This soon? That's hard, man. That's really hard. So you be careful with him.'

Patrick pauses before he can push his way out of the door, because he can't stop himself. 'Was it hard for you?' he asks, not as gentle as he could. 'To play with someone else?'

 _After me?_ he doesn't add.

Joe sighs. 'No. No, it was the easiest fucking thing in the world, and that sucked.'

***

Patrick stumbles out of bed and to the coffee machine before he really opens his eyes, and it's only when he finally peels his gummy, scratchy eyelids apart to check the level of precious elixir in the dripping pot that he realises there's a floorshow. 

Mikey's got Pete on the sofa, held by the shoulders, long long hands splayed over his collarbones and fingertips edging to the hollow of his throat. Like he's a flight risk, only Pete's utterly fucking blissed out, practically melted into the shitty upholstery.

Patrick jerks his hand away from the coffee pot when he realises it's burning, and he must make some small noise because Mikey's eyes flutter open, and focus on him. Patrick freezes, but Mikey doesn't. He doesn't change what he's doing at all, just strokes at Pete's neck and hooks teeth in his lower lip. 

Pete makes a tiny noise. 'Shh,' Mikey murmurs into his mouth, tipping their heads sideways a little so Pete's facing more away from Patrick - and Patrick has, if anything, a better view, at least of the tautness of the tendons in Pete's neck and the way his fingertips flex helplessly against Mikey's waist. 

Patrick … chickens out. He kicks the side of his bunk trying to climb back into it in a hurry, and a corresponding guilty noise from the lounge area makes him finally feel shame in the pit of his stomach. He shouldn't keep fucking interrupting something that's none of his business, something that other people, people he cares about, get comfort out of. He shouldn't be asking nasty little questions in the back of his head about what and how and why. 

This means something to Pete. It always has, even when nothing else seemed to. And it's not Patrick's business. 

***

2am in the back studio, Patrick's headphones chunky, bumping around his neck and Mikey appears. 

'Sorry about this morning,' he says softly. He picks up Pete's bass again, sits down in an origami pose around it. 'I shouldn't have - whatever. I promise, we'll keep it on the downlow more. Pete doesn't want you to be uncomfortable, or anything.'

Patrick rolls his eyes. 'I'm not _uncomfortable_ ,' he says, because he's not. That's … not the issue. He doesn't know what the issue is, to be honest, but that's not the issue.

Mikey eyes him. 'Yeah,' he says, and that's less soft, if no less quiet. 'That's what I told him.' He stretches upwards, black-and-red body of the bass balancing in his lap, rocked back against his ribcage, arms spindled to the ceiling and the sky. Patrick can hear every piece of cartilage in his back crack. When Mikey settles back down, his knee's touching Patrick's again. 

'He wants this tour to work,' Mikey says. 'More than any fucking thing, Patrick, he doesn't want you guys to end here, and I know he wants me to feel better too but like. I've gotta … whatever, feel my goddamn emo feelings, or whatever.' He sighs. 'I should have just flown home from LA. I'm bringing you guys down.'

'Pete just wants to fix everything for everyone,' says Patrick, sharper, louder than he meant. 

The thing is, it's true, and they both know it. Pete Wentz is the reason flight attendants always have to remind you to put your own oxygen mask on before assisting others.

'It's only a couple more days til we hit Jersey,' says Mikey, and this time he's barely above a whisper. 'Please don't switch buses again. He - he missed you.' There's a crack in Mikey's facade, hairline, but it lets enough out for Patrick to see by.

Oh.

For the first time Patrick wishes he were more queer. Or kinder. But what the fuck can he say? 

He lets Mikey's knee stay where it is, heat bleeding through denim, so much like and so far away from Pete on stage, and starts to play a slow, heartbeat-paced twelve-bar blues that barely rings without amplification. He's not thinking, but what is there to think about?

Mikey picks it up. The lights and the miles flash by outside. 

'You know I can't,' Patrick says eventually. 'I don't …'

Mikey sighs, and shrugs. 'It's okay. Neither does he.'


	2. Joe/Patrick deleted "prologue" scene

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Joe and Patrick kissed once!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back when I was wiggling my way into Patrick's mixed feelings about sexuality and boys (and how there's a difference between 'i'm not personally into it' and 'it's wrong' and how hard, sometimes, people find it to state the former without implying the latter), I thought there might be room in this fic for a different encounter, as a counterpoint.
> 
> In the end I couldn't really tie up this thread, so I dropped the scene, but I liked it enough to hang on to it.

_2003_

Patrick's mostly thinking about the bite of the gravel under his ass and how he wishes he had a second hoodie to put between himself, his first hoodie, his jacket, and the elements, when Joe says, 'So, I think we should make out.'

They're leaning up against the side of their piece of shit van, waiting for Andy to lever Pete out of the bar that Patrick and Joe aren't allowed in after their set has finished, and Patrick's … pretty sure he must have heard that wrong.

'You ... what?'

Joe shrugs. 'You never wanted to find out why everyone makes such a big deal about it?'

'I don't think I'm into dudes,' Patrick says, because this seems more, like, relevant to the conversation at hand.

'Me neither, but I never tried it.' Joe shrugs. 'So how do I even know? How do you even know?'

When you put it like that … Patrick is actually pretty sure he knows without needing an empirical test, but you don't have to want to fuck someone to kiss them. Joe's right, too - it is, when you think about it, pretty weird that people make such a huge deal out of kissing other dudes, particularly given how fucking frequently everyone they seem to end up partying with does it.

Patrick sees things, okay. 

'I don't think I'm into _you_ ,' Patrick says, for full disclosure, but he doesn't move away when Joe shuffles up. 

'Duh. But at least you know I won't punch you over giving this a shot.'

Okay that's a fair point, Patrick's seen that at parties, too.

He rolls his eyes at Joe, though. 'You punched me this morning. Over a _bagel_.'

'Yeah, well, it was the last bagel. C'mon, are we doing this or not? It's research!'

Research or not, it's fucking cold and now Joe's suggested it Patrick ... kind of does wanna find out if it's different enough to warrant the kind of high octane jitters Pete gets when the subject of boys comes up. So he cuddles up fully - the addition of Joe's body heat is already worth it - and leans in. 'Yeah, alright, I guess.'

Joe's mouth is a bit chapped, but soft and warm, and … well, it feels like making out. Patrick relaxes into the rhythm of it like he always relaxes into the way Joe plays, and thinks about it. As a way to kill time, jamming would still be better, but their guitars are already packed up and this is … it's okay? Kinda fun. Nice, Patrick would say, aware that if it was actually _good_ -good he wouldn't be thinking about it like this, his teeth at Joe's lip and Joe's tongue actually in his mouth. He's not in danger of embarrassing himself like he was the first time he made out with a girl.

He's kind of trying to show off, he realises, but then again he's pretty sure Joe's doing the same. Neither of them is willing to give ground, so it ends up being kind of fighty and they're giggling against each other's mouths and pulling stupid showy tongue maneouvres that are just making a mess rather than being anything actually like a proper makeout session, when there's noise over by the bar door, a spilling-out laugh that sounds like Pete and a murmur that sounds like Andy trying to steady him. Joe's teeth startle closed on Patrick's bottom lip and he yelps, involuntarily, as they hurriedly part. 

'So - verdict?' Joe says, wiping his mouth.

'It's not worth the hype,' Patrick whispers, bottom lip throbbing, and Joe laughs. 

'Yeah, no offence dude but I think we're not, like, compatible.'

Pete falls into the van when Andy unlocks it, and Patrick and Joe follow suit. Andy gives them a quirked eyebrow. 'Hope you weren't too bored, waiting around,' and Patrick has to stifle a flustered response.

'We entertained ourselves like good children,' says Joe airily, and Andy accepts it.

Pete though, eyes kind of unfocused, is staring at Patrick's face. 'I think someone got luckyyyyy,' he teases, loud and brash.

Patrick didn't stop blushing from Andy's innocent enquiry and Pete's considerably less innocent one is not exactly helping the whole thing. 'Fuck off,' he says. 'You're drunk.'

'I may be a little tipsy,' says Pete with great dignity, 'but I know stubble-rash when I see it.'

Joe's hiding his grin but Patrick can see it reflected in the van window as Andy starts the engine and they pull out of the parking lot. 

'You're delusional,' Patrick growls. 

'Methinks the jailbait doth protest too much. Who was it, Pattycakes, c'mon. Tell me so I can defend your honour.'

'I was here with Joe the whole time,' Patrick says, taking refuge in the truth. He never knows what to say when Pete pokes and pokes and pokes at him like this, and the truth is all he has. 'Now will you please shut the fuck up?' He hunches down in his hoodie and jacket and lets his hat tip over his face, to no avail.

Pete's at the point of chanting Patrick's name - _Patrick, Patrick, Patrick, Patrickpatrickpatrick -_ when Andy finally says, 'Pete, for God's sake.'

'What? I just want to know who deflowered our -'

'Oh my - no-one deflowered me,' Patrick snarls. 'I told you. I was here with Joe.'

Andy snorts, and Patrick realises he's made a tactical error the second Pete swivels to look at Joe, smirking into the crook of his elbow, wedged up against the van window, and then back at Patrick. 'No,' he breathes. 'Nooooo.'

'I will shiv you with a guitar pick and leave you on the side of the road to bleed out,' Patrick says. He catches Pete's wrist before Pete can actually cuddle him, and squeezes as viciously as he can, with fingernails. 

'Okay, okay, Jesus,' Pete says, but he does shut up. Patrick shoves him sideways, away, and within ten minutes he's drooling on Joe's shoulder. 

Patrick thinks that's the end of it, but he should have known better.

Within twelve hours Pete tells an interviewer that 'Joe and Patrick kissed once while they were drunk,' on live tv. Joe handles it well, at least. Patrick tries, but he knows he goes as red as a tomato. He just hopes the sudden, violent vibration of rage that starts up in him isn't evident on camera or audible in his voice when he calmly tells the interviewer that no, they weren't drunk, because he's not that kind of a coward, to try and find an excuse, or to lie. He's not _ashamed_ of it, for fuck's sake. 

Once the cameras are off, though, he lets the act drop, _slams_ into the green room on Pete's heels and rounds on him, barely able to keep his fisted hands down by his side.

'Where the fuck do you get off, Pete?'

'Patrick -'

'It wasn't a big deal, you fucking damage case,' Patrick yells at him. 'And even if it was, it's not your business. What the hell is your problem?'

Joe and Andy have already baldly gone, although Patrick would bet money he doesn't have that Andy at least is outside the door in case Pete needs to be caught before he throws himself into a dumpster or a bed or a bottle. Patrick shouldn't yell at him, knowing that, but he has a right to be furious over this, he has a _right_. Maybe he doesn't get anything that's private to just him anymore, but some things should at least stay between the four of them. 

Pete mulishly doesn't say anything, just stares at Patrick with those well-deep, eyeliner-garrisoned eyes. Patrick could fucking punch him. Doesn't he get it? 

'Do you want me to tell the next girl with a microphone you're a three-beer queer, huh? Since we're apparently so sharing and caring? Where do you think Joe and I got the fucking idea, huh?'

'I don't know what you're talking about,' Pete says a little shakily, and he's gone before Patrick can stop him.


End file.
